Sex Differences in Symptoms of Depression: Clinical Disorder or Normal Distress?

Abstract

Studies that employ screening inventories to assess depression in the general population consistently find that women report more symptoms than men. The present study investigates the hypothesis that relatively mild, if not clinically trivial, symptoms of distress largely account for the female excess in symptom reports. A confirmatory factor analysis of data from a 1978 central Wisconsin community survey of 1,026 adults was done, and the results support the hypothesis. The implications of such sources of measurement error for epidemiological investigations are discussed.